IEEE Spectrum Freelance Market Guide
Created October 6, 2022; Revised Oct. 6, 2025
Fees: The fee for 600- to 800-word reported posts ranges from $500 to $650. These are off the news and usually have one source. For meatier 800 to 1,200 word news stories, the fee is from $1.25 to $2 per word, depending on the experience and track record of the writer.
The fee for features is the same and depends on the experience of the writer. Feature stories are typically 2,500 words, although editors welcome shorter features and will consider longer ones.
Submit to: For news-related stories, contact News Manager Michael Koziol at m.koziol@ieee.org; for biomedical engineering features, email Eliza Strickland at e.strickland@ieee.org.
Website: spectrum.ieee.org
Owner: IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), a technical professional organization with more than 400,000 members worldwide.
Readership demographics: Readers are electrical, computer and electronics engineers, technologists more generally, engineering students and other professionals who want to keep tabs on science and technology.
Frequency of publication: The website is updated daily. The magazine is published monthly.
What they look for in a pitch: Editors are looking for a specific subset of science and technology stories, said former News Manager Margo Anderson. “The rough and ready rule of thumb is to find the moving electrons. If there are moving electrons, then we might be interested in the story,” she said.
There are 12 topic areas, whether digital or print: aerospace; artificial intelligence; biomedical; computing; consumer electronics; energy; history of technology; robotics; semiconductors; sensors; telecommunications; and transportation. Health care reporters should not feel locked into pitching only a biomedical story. For example, health-related stories could be about robotics, consumer electronics or artificial intelligence, said Anderson.
That said, new writers to IEEE Spectrum should not email a detailed story pitch. The onboarding process for contracts can take several months, and so editors are not likely to green light a story until onboarding is complete. Instead, freelancers new to the publication should describe the kinds of stories they have written in the past—and include links to some clips— and the kinds of stories that they would like to pitch in the future.
If the editors are interested, they will contact the freelancer for a followup phone call to learn more about their interests. “I have a whole raft of contributors, and when I come across a story idea, I want to be able to know that it’s a good story for Jane because Jane is a really good freelancer in this area and loves covering this topic,” said Anderson.
Once the editors have determined a freelancer is going to make a good contributor, they will start the onboarding process.
Most common mistakes editors see in pitches: “The most common misperception of people pitching us is that we run any science and technology story, and we don’t, we absolutely don’t,” said Anderson. “Read our website and see what we do.”
Best place to break in: News stories are probably the best place for a freelancer to start because there are many more of them than features each month.